UPA can't let guard down on corruption

By refusing to negotiate with Anna Hazare or Baba Ramdev the government seems to have decided they are busted flushes. But are they?

Last year when they came to Delhi to fast in protest against corruption the government panicked. Anna was placated by the agreement to set up a committee to establish a Lokpal to investigate complaints of corruption.

The police were sent in the middle of the night to disperse Baba Ramdev's supporters, earning the government ridicule for over-reacting and criticism for the police's brutality. The Baba might well have become a hero if he hadn't been arrested trying to escape dressed as a woman.

Yoga guru Swami Ramdev and social activist Anna Hazare during the third day of Team Anna's agitation against corruption at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi

This year the government felt confident enough to ignore both the fasts. Anna, realising that fasting was getting him nowhere gave up after three days amid uncertainty over whether he wanted to form a political party or not.

Baba Ramdev managed to stage a tamasha by marching on Parliament, ably assisted by the Delhi Police, who this time treated him and his supporters with kid gloves. Delhi didn't turn out to support Anna for his second fast. Last year the electronic media acted as recruiting sergeants for Anna but this time they were if not silent at least low key. The media disparaged Ramdev's fast until he and his faithful followers created that tamasha. When I visited Baba Ramdev's supporters camping on the Ram Lila ground every one I talked to was a practitioner of his school of Yoga.

They had come from Himachal, Madhya Pradesh, UP, Bihar and West Bengal - evidence of the reach of Baba Ramdev's television following and the organising skills of his Patanjali Yogpeeth, but not evidence of a mass movement.

Does the fate of the fasts suggest that the steam has gone out of the anti-corruption movement, and the government can now relax? There is an Indian tradition of taking a relaxed view of corruption, of seeing it as an inevitable feature of life. The tradition goes back to Chanakya who said, "Just as it's impossible not to taste honey or poison when it's on the tip of the tongue so it's impossible for a government servant not to eat up at least a bit of the King's revenue."

Indian voters have been tolerating corruption since 1937. In more recent times Indira Gandhi dismissed concerns about Indian corruption on the grounds that corruption was a global phenomenon. Even more recently there's been the advice that Shiv Pal Yadav, the UP Public Works Minister and uncle of the Chief Minister, gave to his engineers - it's all right to steal but not to be a dacoit.

But although the response to Anna's fast indicates that middle class anger about corruption is not the potent force it was thought to be at the height of his movement last year, although Baba Ramdev has not so far founded a mass movement it would be unwise for the government to relax its guard and rely on India's traditional attitude to corruption.

It will be tempted to do so. That is after all one of the accepted ways governments deal with problems - waiting for them to go away. That's the way the BJP dealt with the Tehelka scandal. It's the way the BJP even when they were in power also dealt with its own demand to build the Ayodhya temple.

Nearly twenty years after the mosque was pulled down the pillars and beams carved to beautify the temple are as far as I know still lying in a builders yard in Ayodhya.

But relying on amnesia probably isn't going to work with the corruption issue this time. When the press was writing off Ramdev's gathering opposition leaders were jumping onto his bandwagon, openly expressing support for him.

So opposition leaders obviously think the Baba still wields a big enough stick to help them keep corruption at the top of the political agenda. It's not just the political impact of the anti-corruption movement which should worry the government.

Talk to anyone prominent in business, talk privately to senior officials, and they will admit that the feverish atmosphere created by the anticorruption movement and the media, and the fact that a former minister along with a veteran member of the Congress party are among those who have found themselves in jail, is having a damaging impact on government work.

Officials do not want to take decisions for fear that they will be accused of corruption. An architect friend of mine told me that he had worked on government contracts for twenty years but had given up now because it took so much time to get clearances.

A cynical international banker said to me, "Indians agitating about corruption don't realise it's only corruption which gets anything done in their country."

The government has another worry - the impact of all the publicity about corruption on international opinion, and in particular investors' opinion. The Prime Minister's Office now sends foreign correspondents who write about corruption text messages reminding them about the measures which have been taken to curb it.

But two of the most important measures are not yet effective. The Lokpal bill is stuck in the Rajya Sabha and the bill to protect Whistleblowers has still to be passed in the upper house. Even if the Lokpal bill is passed in its present form it won't satisfy anti corruption campaigners, or take the sting out of the opposition's campaign.

A senior Congressman said to me, "Say what you like Anna and Ramdev have succeeded in making corruption a major issue. So Congress is going to have to face that issue in the next election whether Anna forms a party or not, and Baba Ramdev will certainly be planning more tamashas to enliven the run-up to that election.